lokutionär

Lokutionär is a term used in linguistics and pragmatics to refer to the locutionary aspect of speech acts. A lokutionärer act is the act of uttering a sequence of words with a conventional meaning and phonetic form. In the framework of speech act theory, proposed by J. L. Austin, three concurrent layers describe what an utterance accomplishes: the locutionary act (the act of saying something), the illocutionary act (the speaker’s intention, such as making a request, giving a promise, or issuing a warning), and the perlocutionary act (the effect on the listener, such as persuading or causing an action).

The locutionary content includes the actual words, their syntax, and their literal semantic content. The illocutionary force is not determined solely by the words but by context, intonation, and social conventions. For example, the sentence “Could you close the window?” has a locutionary act of uttering those words; its illocutionary act is a request; its perlocutionary effect could be the listener closing the window.

Origin and influence: Austin introduced the locutionary-illocutionary-perlocutionary framework in the mid-20th century, and John Searle later elaborated the theory, focusing on illocutionary forces and speech acts as intentional actions. The term lokutionär is used predominantly in German-language literature, but the concept is widely discussed in philosophy of language and linguistics.

In practice, researchers analyze locutionary acts as the basis for understanding how utterances function within communicative interaction, distinguishing what is said from what is accomplished and what effects result.